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NTV'S WEEK A brief look at the tumultuous week for NTV television, leading to Thursday's announcement of a conciliatory committee to try and find a compromise. . Monday: A Saratov court bans an NTV shareholders meeting for Tuesday, called by state-dominated gas monopoly Gazprom. Gazprom holds 46 percent of the company's shares, and planned the meeting to dump Media-MOST head Vladimir Gu sin sky and managers appointed by him. . Tuesday: Yevgeny Kiselyov, general director of NTV, arrives at Gazprom's offices to present the ruling by the court, only to see a paper signed by the same judge reversing his decision. |
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 MOSCOW - Embattled NTV management agreed Thursday to sit down with Gazprom-Media representatives and hammer out a compromise to their protest of the takeover of the channel by the subsidiary of state-controlled gas giant Gazprom. |
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While protests have been taking place all over the country against the management takeover of NTV television, another change in the media landscape - this time in St. Petersburg - has been attracting its fair share of controversy amid mutterings of an information war. |
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MOSCOW - CNN founder Ted Turner announced Wednesday that he has struck a deal with Vladimir Gusinsky to buy stakes in several of his Media-MOST companies. |
 St. Petersburg journalists and politicians gathered Thursday to condemn Gazprom management's takeover of NTV, and have sent a letter to President Vladimir Putin protesting against what they called "the destruction of the best and most professional Russian television channel." "The destruction of this channel will inevitably [herald] similar actions towards private media in many regions of Russia," said the letter, which was written by board members of the St. |
All photos from issue.
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Ivanov, Powell To Meet MOSCOW (Reuters) - Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov is to meet U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in Paris next week on the sidelines of an international meeting on Yugoslavia, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. A ministry statement said the two men would "continue discussion of key issues on the Russian-American political agenda. |
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MOSCOW - President Vladimir Pu tin on Tuesday applauded the relative political and economic stability achieved over the past year, but warned that it was too early for the government to rest on its laurels, and that much work was still needed to transform stability into growth and improved living conditions. |
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MOSCOW - Russia and the European Union, gearing up for a summit in Mos cow next month, said on Thursday that they were expanding their ever deepening contacts to embrace security issues. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he had brought fresh proposals to Moscow on joint cooperation with Russia on defense and security. The former Spanish foreign minister and NATO secretary general met Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, new Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and the incoming head of the influential Presidential Security Council during his stay. "We have some concrete proposals of how to continue working together on the field of crisis management," Solana told reporters after meeting Ivanov, a reference to the greater role in solving regional conflicts sought by the EU. |
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 Who is Boris Jordan? A shady character with a spotty reputation? A wealthy businessman who enjoys being in the limelight? Or perhaps a Zionist or an American spy? These were some of the ways prominent politicians and business leaders on Wednesday characterized Jordan, the 34-year-old son of Russian émigrés who just a day earlier was appointed general director of NTV television. |
 A lawsuit brought by a pensioner against the Petro tobacco firm moved into its second hearing on Thursday, with proceedings concentrating on evidence from medical specialists. The suit is the first of its kind to be heard in a Russian court. Ivan Prokopenko is demanding health and moral damages of $71,500 from Petro, owned by multinational Japan Tobacco International (JTI), for lung cancer which he says was the result of smoking Belomorkanal papirosy - a type of non-filtered cigarette - for 40 years. |
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MOSCOW - Norway challenged Moscow on Thursday over a report that the Kursk submarine was carrying nuclear weapons when it plunged to the sea bed last year, and received assurances from the Russian Navy that the story was nonsense. |
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GENEVA - Russia said on Thursday it was investigating more than 60 cases of alleged crimes by Russian soldiers against Chechen civilians, including 22 who are charged with murder. But Vladimir Kalamanov, special representative of President Vladimir Putin for the Protection of Human and Civil Rights in the Chechen Republic, blamed "terrorist" activities for the "serious problems" which still plague the separatist republic. |
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MOSCOW - Firefighters backed by two helicopters battled a blaze Wednesday that roared through a warehouse on 4th Ulitsa Marina Roshcha in northern Moscow and sent aerosol cans stored there soaring into the air and exploding. |
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 WASHINGTON - Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref on Tuesday called on the Bush administration to clarify its policies toward Russia. Gref said in an interview that in discussions with U.S. officials earlier Tuesday, there was a "long list of questions about policy toward Russia but very few answers. |
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MOSCOW - Russia does not need World Bank money to support structural economic reforms, but will get $150 million from the bank to help a restructuring of the coal sector, a senior World Bank official said Wednesday. |
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MOSCOW - U.S. government-funded mortgage program DeltaCredit has made its first partnership with a Western bank operating in Russia by teaming up with Dutch-based ABN AMRO. ABN AMRO becomes the 15th partner bank for DeltaCredit, the financial arm of The U. |
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MOSCOW - While its volume may be minuscule by international standards, the Russian Trading System outperformed all but two of the world's 38 major stock exchanges over the first three months of the year. |
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MOSCOW - The International Monetary Fund and World Bank said Tuesday that Russia, in order to keep its economy healthy, should prevent the ruble from strengthening too much. "The government should prevent excessive real appreciation of the ruble, which would jeopardize the economic recovery," Gerard Belanger, deputy director of the IMF's second European Department, told an economic conference in Moscow. |
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Electrolux in Town ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) - Swedish Appliance manufacturer Electrolux announced Thursday that it plans to build a $60 million plant to build washing machines in St. |
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LOMO will pay full dividends to its preferred shareholders for the first time in four years, the company announced Tuesday. According to a press release from the firm, the board of directors at the Leningrad Optical-Mechanical Association, Russia's largest producer of military and civilian optics, will submit the payment plan at an annual shareholder meeting scheduled for June 9. |
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As the world knows, Texas is one of most polluted places on the face of the earth. There, countless poisons boil and bubble beneath the harsh sun, belching out of vast industrial citadels excused from environmental regulation by the grace of the former governor, now translated to glory. |
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VLADIVOSTOK, Far East - A few weeks before I first moved here four years ago, I ran into an American woman (let's call her Sissy) who was enduring a traumatized life in this Far Eastern city and wanted to suggest some things that I should take with me to help me overcome the isolation. |
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"A people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with power which knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." - James Madison "Why should a government which is doing what it believes to be right allow itself to be criticized? It would not allow opposition by lethal weapons. |
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AS the international community gathers this week in Geneva for the UN Commission on Human Rights, Human Rights Watch urges the adoption of a resolution to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate the recent discovery of more than 50 bodies in a village close to the main Russian military base in Chechnya, as well as other human rights crimes committed by Russian troops and Chechen rebel forces. |
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Dear Editor, May I remind you that what you call "the world" has already helped Russia in Chechnya once in the mid-1990s ["World Can Help Russia in Chechnya," March 20]. Then OSCE mediators playted the role of the Chechen rebels' intelligence branch so effectively that in August 1996, the rebels managed to take Grozny in next to no time. |
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THE WASHINGTON POST More than anything in [President Vladimir Putin's address to the Federation Council], the Gazprom coup made clear what Putin means by stability: a country where there are no independent media to document, as NTV has, the government's brutal war against Chechnya, the revival of a secret police apparatus and the slow suffocation of Russia's fragile democracy. |
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 JFC Jazz Club is celebrating its seventh anniversary with a jazz festival opening at the club Thursday. Called "Jazz Spring in St. Petersburg," it is organized for the sixth time and takes place at five venues - culminating in "Jazz Stars on the Classical Stage" gala at the Shostakovich Philharmonic on April 17. |
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Zdob Si Zdub has dropped out of the Fuzz Awards ceremony and concert, which will take place at the Yubileiny Sports Palace on Saturday. |
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The Golden Mask Festival is still three days from completion, but one thing can already be said for certain: Interest this year has been nothing short of phenomenal. I have yet to attend a show where there has been anything less than a standing-room-only crowd. |
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The Colombian Cinema Retrospective, which runs from April 7 to April 12 at Dom Kino, adds a new dimension to the St. Petersburg film exhibition scene. The festival is an engaging, varied mix of some of the most internationally successful films to come from a South American country more known for its violent civil wars and drug cartels than for its cinematic wonders. |
 Looking at 11th-century Scotland through the dual prisms of Shakespeare and Verdi - such is the task facing British director David McVicar and his compatriot set designer Tanya McCallin as they prepare to unveil their rendition of Verdi's "Macbeth," based on Shakespeare's play, which premieres on April 18 at the Mariinsky Theater. |
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In one particularly funny episode of The Simpsons, down-at-heel barman Moe decides to turn his flagging bar into a "family restaurant," replete with wacky wall features and a "crazy" menu, calculating that people whose lives lack excitement will then start coming in hoards. |
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SKOPJE, Macedonia - The world pressed hard on Thursday for a serious political dialogue between Macedonia's Slav majority and ethnic Albanian minority, but fresh differences showed the latest Balkan crisis was far from over. Mircea Geoana, the chairman-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Macedonian parties should seize the chance of peace offered by the talks. |
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MILAN - Italy said on Thursday police had smashed the "nerve center'' of an Islamic group bent on carrying out attacks across Europe. Police swooped in on five suspected members of the guerrilla group, believed linked to Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden, who is wanted in the United States in connection with bomb attacks on U. |
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Bomb Kills Militant JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Islamic Jihad militant died instantly on Thursday when a booby-trapped public telephone blew up while he was using it, and Palestinians accused Israel of assassinating him. In another action likely to anger Palestinians and hamper peace moves, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's month-old government announced it would auction off West Bank land for the building of 700 more Jewish settler houses. The move drew quick condemnation from the United States, which used much stronger language than in previous statements on Jewish settlements. Iyad al-Hardan, 30, died in the phone-booth explosion. He had left his Palestinian Authority prison cell in the northern West Bank city of Jenin briefly to make a call from a phone he often used. |
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 LEEDS, England - Leeds United manager David O'Leary said his side would not crumble in Spain after securing a decisive 3-0 first-leg lead in its Champions League quarterfinal against Deportivo Coruna. |
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Hingis Stalker Guilty MIAMI (AP) - A man who said he fell in love with tennis star Martina Hingis and followed her to tournaments around the world despite her pleas to stay away has been convicted of stalking. Dubravko Rajcevic, a 46-year-old Croatian-born naval architect from Australia, was found guilty Tuesday of stalking and three counts of trespassing at the 2000 Ericsson Open near Miami. |
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